Reshaping Fable: How Albion has Changed for Fable III

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Molyneux takes us through everything that means this is much more than Fable 2.5.

By Martin Robinson

Big name games need big development time. The six year wait for Remedy's Alan Wake may be one extreme, but the very best games often make us wait. Conversely, when a game's turned swiftly around suspicions are raised; will it be a quick cash-in, a rushed job or something that's far from great.

So it was with Fable III – its announcement at last August's Gamescom came when many people were still chewing its predecessor over, and when Peter Molyneux later claimed that the leap from Fable II to Fable III was bigger than that between the first and second games it was hard not to take that statement with a pinch of salt.

A few months further down the line at E3 we finally got to play it, and it turns out we were wrong in our early skepticism. Fable III really is a big leap for the series, and its theme of revolution is fitting for a game that tears through what people expect from the world of Albion. We caught up with Molyneux soon after to discuss what's changed and why, and how Fable III is so much more than Fable 2.5.

BIGGER STORY, BIGGER EMOTIONS

Fable's story – as the name suggests – has always been a simple fairytale told with thick strokes of British humor and powered by the all-important moral decisions that are at its heart. That's no different for Fable III, though this time out there's more emphasis on the yarn being told, both in where it takes the player and how it's told.

More Fable III Info "When we sat down and did the design of Fable III it was very, very different," says Molyneux, "We've got fans now – we've got people who love Fable and love Albion, and now if I say the wrong thing to the press I get about 50 emails saying 'You shouldn't have said that, you should have said this.' We've set this world up, so there are certain things that we should do and certain things that we shouldn't do."

Fable III's story is defined by its rulers – the first an evil King who has taken the throne of Albion. "He's actually your brother. Fable III is set sixty years on from Fable II, your hero that you played in Fable II had two more children after the single player story. They were both brothers – or if you choose to play as a girl brother and sister – and one of those brothers left the kingdom of Albion."

"Unfortunately your brother seems to have gone a bit insane. He's the most evil, terrible tyrant, a cross between Mussolini, Hitler and Gordon Brown. Your job is to start a revolution – to go out there, get people to follow you and to overthrow this king. You're going to storm the castle, overthrow him and then you're going to become King yourself. That's about the halfway point of the game. Then the rest of the story is the story of you being King. There are all sorts of new drama that's going to be in that story."

AN ALL-NEW MECHANIC, AN ALL NEW GAME

The most exciting thing about Fable III is, as is Molynueux's wont, the one part of the game that remains the most mysterious. Once you become the King the game is flipped on its head as the all-new ruling mechanic comes to the fore.

"Here's the thing," explains Molyneux, "The way it works is that on your way to being King, people have come up to you and asked you to promise that you're going to do things when you're on the throne. So for example there is a character called Reaver, who you might remember from Fable II and who is played by Stephen Fry. He's back – because he's immortal. And he asks that when you're King he wants a whole area [of Albion] to be factories. Are you going to keep that promise? Or are you going to break that promise?

"Are you going to rob people blind? Are you going to use that money to decorate your castle? There are a lot of those decisions."

There are a lot of questions too regarding how exactly this will pan out – and while it's something that's being kept under wraps we've been given a dim picture of how it will work. Powering it all is followers, a unified system throughout Fable III that is, in many ways, its replacement for traditional XP (and, in some ways, a little nod to the social networking site de jour, Twitter).

"The more followers you have the more powerful you'll be and the sooner there'll be a revolution. The more followers you have the more game features are unlocked. You get followers by doing quests, you get followers by making promises and you can get followers by grinding. Some people love to grind."